No boot. Black screen. No chime.

== Is it my logic board? or my top case?== mine is the model with the 3.06GHz processor and a matte screen.

My computer was fine until April 2010, when I returned from 2 weeks in Haiti [volunteering, not a holiday] with HD errors [was left in backpack, in full sun for an hour one day]. I replaced HD with a Seagate Momentus Solid State Hybrid SATA Drive. Blew out some dust with compressed air since the case was open.

Optical drive stopped reading and writing in Nov 2011. So, I started copying over firewire to the dvd burner on my old powerbook. I often keep the Macbook pro running for a week or so before rebooting... but I run disk utility regularly, and repair permissions every month or so. Otherwise, everything was fine until it stopped dead last week. I went out for groceries, came back... dead. It was running when I left. It was cold. No boot, no chime. It was connected to an external display, so I knew it wasn't just the backlight. I read a lot here, at ifixit, to try and figure it out.

I followed the apple troubleshooting and disconnected all the peripherals and zapped the PRAM, reset the SMC, to no avail. If I held down the power I could get the fans to spin up and the tiny light at the front to go on, steady. But that's it. Since I have no applecare, I cracked it open and swapped RAM in and out to see if it has gone bad. While was in there, I blew out some dust. The heat sink [the long twisty one from the fans across the chips] had obviously been hot: it had slightly adhered to the black plastic that covers the keyboard. I feel like it has been running hot, but I cannot quantify that with numbers.

I checked the logic board for anything obvious and saw a small amount of corrosion on the board near the audio jacks and card slot. Mostly, the solder appeared dull compared to the rest of the board. I cleaned it with 99% alcohol on a little brush. I was checking it out with a loupe, and I could see dust on everything, so I gave the whole board a bit of a once-over with the alcohol/brush.

I put everything back together. No chime, no signs of life of any sort [except the battery gauge responds accurately]. The battery charges, the adapter goes from orange to green. I was pretty careful with discharging static before cleaning the logic board. There may have been a tiny splash of coffee a couple of days before this happened [-- it was on the speaker grille on the DVD side of the case, and there is no evidence of it inside the case, but I have not burrowed into the keyboard].

I disconnected the HD, optical drive, airport, bluetooth, battery gauge, one speaker, keyboard backlight, trackpad and keyboard. I kept the display connector connected [and the speaker and mic on the other side of the LB]. From the keyboard connector, I connected the fifth pin from the left to ground with the power adapter connected and the fans powered up. No other signs of life [as far as I could tell] -- no chime [but one speaker is disconnected], and there is nothing else connected to light up... but the display doesn't do anything.

I reconnected everything except the keyboard and optical drive. Powered up again with the contacts on the keyboard connector: the fans, front "sleep light" and HD power up. Still no display, or chime.

I connected my ipod to a usb port to see if it charges. It doesn't seem to. I am a bit freaked out, since I spend about 12 hours a day working on my computer [image processing, video editing, writing, browsing, my only phone is voip, and some large file transfers regularly].

It has been very dry here. I have accidentally zapped the trackpad numerous times with static electricity.

Is my logic board a goner? I have a multimeter but don't have any idea of what to check, or where... I am grateful for any suggestions, because i am at a bit of a loss here, and I don't know what to do next. If I borrow a usb keyboard should I try to safe boot... would that even work?? could it just be the top case? Please advise....

With both RAM out, fans and HD spin up and front light is on for 2 seconds [ish]. Then everything stops for a second and starts up again. No chime or beeps. The light stays on steady, except for the pause. The fans seem to be full-on: I think they may have been more subdued earlier in the testing. Everything but HD and speakers disconnected from the LB. [thanks for replying!]

If your MacBook Pro is not either beeping in a pattern or the front light is not flashing in a pattern when attempting to boot without Ram then it is failing POST at an early stage. This is not a good thing. Please give us the last 3 characters of your serial number, so we can determine your exact machine and attempt to give you the best/most economical repair options.

*If my only recourse is a new logic board, would any a1286 board work?

and finally, Why? Why did this happen? Was it the static? should i reboot more often? was it the tiny splash of coffee [even though there is no evidence on the LB]? Should we just expect 26 months as a reasonable lifespan for apple products?

After checking for any liquid residue or sensors [still pure white on the 3 I could see, I called. I first spoke to an apple assistant, who pretty much insisted on transferring me to a repair tech.

After explaining that I had covered the preliminaries [zapping, SMC, power button saga], I asked for the repair options.

I said I wanted the flat rate repair and after a 5 minute absence the apple person seemed ok with that, except they mentioned something about a ceiling, or a limit to the flat rate. I am a bit apprehensive.

Apparently they will not ship a box to Canada. And they will not allow me to ship to them. I am not near a store or an authorized repair center, and would prefer to just send it. I don't think if I took it in to the apple store in Toronto that they would do a flat rate repair.

I can fedex it home and have the box go there, and have it fedexed back to me, but that is a lot of transit time and additional expense. In the meantime, i am riffing on possibilities, hoping to be inspired.

My laptop is home. According to the documentation it needed a new logic board. They also replaced the optical drive and put in a new hard drive with a fresh install of snow leopard [which was the OS on the drive]. All told, it came to $351. with shipping-- a bargain considering the alternatives.

Super glad that I swapped in the old hard drive before sending it in. It has taken a long time to resolve this [needing to workaround international borders, travel and shipping times].

ABCellars, Thank-you. Your advice was spot-on and I am very grateful that you took the time to help me confirm the problem and explicitly describe a workable solution.

5 Answers

I apologize for the delay in my answer. I got side tracked on other projects. Your logic board is fried, why I don't know. Here is my suggestion for repair:

This only works if there is no liquid or physical damage. Call 1-800-SOS-APPL. When you call mumble inaudible sounds, that way the system doesn't know where to send you and gets a person outside the normal Apple repair department. Explain to them the laptops lack of response, the various things you have tried, including removing the RAM and no beeps with the attempted power up and you want the $280 flat rate repair ( I would not volunteer the coffee.). If they start talking about tiers etc... argue with them that flat rate repairs have no tiers. If they stick to their guns tell them you believe the $280 flat rate repair is through Depot. You want the flat rate repair from Depot. Depot is an Apple sister/daughter company that refurbishes Apple products for Apple. All the refurbished Apple computers/laptops sold at the Apple store are reconditioned by Depot. Stick to your guns. If your computer has no physical or liquid damage, Apple will repair it in the price range I have mentioned. If you take it to the Apple store they will give the same garb about tiers etc... Tell them you want the Depot flat rate repair. But again, make sure there's no liquid damage, or it will come right back to you unrepaired.

ABCellars, thank-you very much for this confirmation and advice. I had really thought there was no point contacting Apple if I was not on applecare. I am disassembling again, to check for any liquid sensors gone red. The repair is complicated because I am out of the US for a while. There is an apple store in Toronto, but I have been reading online that Apple canada does not do flat rate repairs. I am checking the sensors today, and will followup later.

This isn't free, but it is cheaper than most, if not all, the alternatives. Apple stores rarely offer the Depot repair unless they like you and they tend to baulk when they hear you want it. That is one of the reasons I suggested calling Apple first. Once you line up the repair over the phone they will usually send you a box with a prepaid shipping label to attach. Most Apple stores and phone jockeys will tell you there are tiers for the Pro vs the Air or MacBook and another set of tiers for level of repair. That is really not the case, but they have been told to say that. Normally if you stick to your guns they will somehow find a reference to it. The people I learned this "trick" from techs that have been in with Apple for a long time and either own stores selling Apple products and/or were a Apple Certified Care Provider.

- While still holding the PWR button, plug in charger and KEEP HOLDING PWR button

- After 10 seconds of holding the PWR button with the charger plugged in, LET GO of the PWR button and then IMMEDIATELY (within 1 second) press the PWR button again as normally.

Follow the above steps exactly. Your laptop should power on with the fan spinning full-blast. If it continues to boot and function properly, your temperature sensor on the CPU has been damaged and is preventing the computer from functioning properly. The process above bypasses that sensor and allows you to test the rest of the computer. Unfortunately, if the sensor is bad, there is no real way to fix it. However, if the above process works, you can continue to use the computer in that condition until it dies from something else. You will have to live with the fan being on 100% of the time, but will at least have a working computer. Good luck!

I tried your test and it is the first test that gave me any indication of life from my MacBook Air 2011. I can hear the fan turn, but I am not getting any display or beep. What do you think that means?

I have exact same problem with my Macbook Pro 13''. I holded power button for 15 secs to turn it off and after that it didn't start up. Black screen. Flshing light in the front and beeping sounds when removed RAM, but what do I do from there on? Any help would be well appriciated! Thank you!

Hey, thanks for your prompt assistence. I did this exactely as you said, but the last step doesnt work. After I release the PWR button and immediately press the PWR button again the computer doesnt turn on. I have to leave it for minute or so in order to be able to turn it back on (meaning the flashing light appears). Just before this balck screen happend I also did PRAM reset but it turned on and booted normaly after it. I turned it off manually then, holding the power button, and that's when the black screen came up. Never had any problems with it such as heating or screen issues before. Is it possible that PRAM did something to the core functionality that couses this issue rather than some bad part on logic board?

Now when i turn on it start but it is on black screen and the keyboard not working and apple logo not flashing.can you tell me some advice please.it happen to me 2 month ago than i resset pram than turn on but now i dont know what to do.please help.

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